Sunday, August 1, 2010

unmasking the masked crusader: the truth behind bruce wayne.

We the audience see Batman the way he sees himself; a hero who makes a difference, a man who conquers evil using the gifts left to him by his parents, parents who were unfairly taken. We see Batman as a champion of the people, but just because we see Batman this way does not mean that we are on the same page as the citizens and more importantly, the CEOs of Gotham City.

First of all, and a very important fact to note, Batman does not go after the same supervillains we see him take down. The enemies that Batman sees in his head are quite different to those that he actually hunts down, being that Batman is the most literal adaptation of the term "corporate headhunter". Initially, Wayne was employed by Wayne Enterprises due to his familial connections to the company, but after the revelation of his mental instability because of childhood traumas (ie. falling into the well and being terrified by a swarm of bats, his sheltered upbringing and most importantly, his parents dying in front of him), the board of executives tried to move Wayne out of power within the company and attempted to buy him out. However, after he continued to be a nuisance, the executives decided to avoid a lawsuit, as the Wayne family was well-known for being universally liked within the confines of Gotham City for their charity work and kind hearts, and rather employed him as a sort of hitman within the company, allowing him to believe he was protecting the good deeds of his parents by defeating those who sought to destroy it. However, in reality, he was being instructed to defeat rival executives from companies whose power threatened Wayne Enterprises. While it started quite successfully, (competition was running scared leaving Wayne Enterprises to dominate the market, along with the anti-capitalist groups of Gotham City feeling as though someone was finally doing something in the city entirely dominated by businesses and run for the sole purpose of finances) Wayne eventually began to realize similarities between the 'fiends' he was pursuing and the executives of Wayne Enterprises, leading to his attempt on the lives of those who formerly ran the company. A sole executive, Lucius Fox, who had a guilty conscience for the manipulations he had taken part in over Wayne's mind, unwittingly seized an opportunistic moment for a takeover, buying out all the other members of the board in an attempt to stop Wayne from killing anymore; trying to allow him to start over fresh. However, it was too far gone; Wayne saw what he was doing as the ultimate good, but appreciated Fox's "attempt to rid Gotham City of the villains who had the good people in a capitalistic choke-hold." Before seizing actual control of Wayne Enterprises, Fox had tried to have Wayne committed without allowing the public to know what they had done to the orphan of the city's most beloved philanthropists. This is the event that lead to the outbreak in Arkham Asylum, as Wayne felt that Dr. Crane's therapy was invasive and manipulative, but as a normal citizen, Wayne could not harm him. This was why the persona of "Scarecrow" was invented; as a super-villain, Wayne could free his fellow mental patients who he felt were equally as sane as him and being held captive against their wills.

Lucius realized there was very little he could actually do to control Wayne, who had almost been entirely enveloped by the persona of "Batman" that he had created. Bruce lived alone in Wayne Manor and opened up to figments of his imagination: 'Alfred the butler' who represented a father figure and tried to protect him, 'Rachael Dawes', a girl he knew as a child who, early on in her life, was exposed to Gotham's seedy underbelly when she was hit by the car of a scientist who was at the top of one of the opposing monopolies of Gotham City, and therefore managed to get out. While these safeguards were around in Wayne's mind, it was impossible for anyone to break him out of the fantasy he was in, and the more he 'defeated his enemies', the deeper he fell. This was the point where Fox allowed Wayne to have a limited control over his parents company, but as he got deeper and deeper into his fantasies, the company got deeper and deeper into debt due to his greater expenditure on more elaborate designs. A notable one being the single-use monitoring system of everyone within city limits through their mobile phone in a set-up that would allow him, in his mind, to kill a rival CEO. This multi-billion dollar project was crudely destroyed after the murder, leaving a very evident paper trail back to the top of the company.It is estimated that 2008's year, with an estimated profits standing around $770 billion dollars were actually met, but were reduced by almost two thirds due to Wayne's insane scheming, with reports showing $290 billion for the financial year ending 2008. A warrant was placed out for Wayne's arrest, still to this day standing.

A more widespread effect of Wayne's psychotic crimes was found in the late 00's as the market took a fatal blow. As Wayne began dissolving opposing companies through his 'heroic work', and his own projects got bigger, the leading exporting companies in the United States began falling below projected budgets and very far into the red. While the market wasn't exactly stable anyway, Bruce Wayne played a large hand in destroying the specific US export market almost single-handedly through his psychosis and ease in taking the lives of those he deemed 'evil'.

It is these crimes that have lead Wayne to be a universally-sought criminal, facing in excess of two-hundred life sentences, twenty-three death sentences, as well as additional crimes against humanity with a yet to be determined sentence by the United Nations, as well as several other sentences in foreign countries. Wayne was last seen in 2008, and under advice of Gotham City officials, CIA experts as well as united taskforces around the world, the sighting of Bruce Wayne should be reported to your nearest law-enforcement officials so that the appropriate precautions can be put into practice and hopefully bring this menace to justice.